The Boundary Markets

The Boundary Markets are a bustling trading ground at the border between Piltover and Zaun, where merchants from both cities meet on relatively equal footing. Piltovan luxury goods share stall space with Zaunite chemtech contraband, and the crowds mix cultures and classes in a way found almost nowhere else in either city. Among Piltovan writers the markets' plentiful stalls have become a byword for easy procurement; the naturalist Eduard Santangelo likened gathering Ionia's wild fruit to picking an item from a Boundary Markets stall. The markets are served by the Rising Howl, the hexdraulic descender that spans the height of the city. When the elevator halts at the Promenade level, its conductor calls out the Boundary Markets alongside the College of Techmaturgy and the Horticultural Center, and passengers pour out: merchants continuing down to trade in Zaun's night bazaars, workers heading home to sleep, and wealthy Zaunites bound for the glass-domed cultivairs. For Zaunites the markets are woven into daily life. Couples from the Factorywood look forward to romantic dinners there once the work shifts end between fifth and sixth bell, and the sump-snipes who work its crowds practice sleight of hand quick enough to rival the artistes hired for Piltover society functions. The young Vi was a familiar sight hightailing from the markets' angry shopkeepers before swaggering through the Black Lanes or hitching rides up to Piltover aboard the hexdraulic conveyors. Even Zaun's more secretive residents pass through: the anonymous experimenter whose alchemical procedures reshaped a captive man into a chimeric predator recorded returning from the Boundary Markets between stages of his work.